hed at.

"The standard of morality seems to me frightfully low," she observed
reflectively, pouring out a second cup of tea, "especially among women
who aren't well educated. They don't see that small things matter,
and that's where the leakage begins, and then we find ourselves in
difficulties--I very nearly lost my temper yesterday," she went on,
looking at Ralph with a little smile, as though he knew what happened
when she lost her temper. "It makes me very angry when people tell me
lies--doesn't it make you angry?" she asked Katharine.

"But considering that every one tells lies," Katharine remarked, looking
about the room to see where she had put down her umbrella and her
parcel, for there was an intimacy in the way in which Mary and Ralph
addressed each other which made her wish to leave them. Mary, on the
other hand, was anxious, superficially at least, that Katharine should
stay and so fortify her in her determination not to be in love with
Ralph.

Ralph, while lifting his cup from his lips to the table, had made up his
mind that if Miss Hilbery left, he would go with her.

"I don't think that I tell lies, and I don't think that Ralph tells
lies, do you, Ralph?" Mary continued.

Katharine laughed, with more gayety, as it seemed to Mary, than
she could properly account for. What was she laughing at? At them,
presumably. Katharine had risen, and was glancing hither and thither, at
the presses and the cupboards, and all the machinery of the office, as
if she included them all in her rather malicious amusement, which caused
Mary to keep her eyes on her straightly and rather fiercely, as if she
were a gay-plumed, mischievous bird, who might light on the topmost
bough and pick off the ruddiest cherry, without any warning. Two women
less like each other could scarcely be imagined, Ralph thought, looking
from one to the other. Next moment, he too, rose, and nodding to Mary,
as Katharine said good-bye, opened the door for her, and followed her
out.

Mary sat still and made no attempt to prevent them from going. For a
second or two after the door had shut on them her eyes rested on the
door with a straightforward fierceness in which, for a moment, a certain
degree of bewilderment seemed to enter; but, after a brief hesitation,
she put down her cup and proceeded to clear away the tea-things.

The impulse which had driven Ralph to take this action was the result of
a very swift little piece of reasoning, and thus, p